Repentance: Part 1 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning and welcome to another week. As we start this week, you know, the best way you can start any week and any day is with God. God wants to meet with you. No matter who you are, no matter what’s going on in your life. God wants to meet with you, and He wants to help make your life what He designed it to be in the first place. Well, I hope that sounds good to you, and it starts with a relationship with God.

We’re going to talk all this week about the topic of repentance – something that for many people is not a positive idea, but it’s a necessary part of life, repentance, making your relationship with God good again.

I want to start off by reading from the Bible this morning from 2 Corinthians chapter 7. The apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthian church, and here’s what he says to them.

For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it though I did regret it, for I see that the letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while. I now rejoice not that you are made sorrowful, but that you are made sorrowful to the point of repentance, for you are made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us, for the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world just produces death.

Well, what an interesting passage, isn’t it?

The apostle has written to the Corinthians in a way that has made them sorrowful, but he says that was good because it led you to repentance, a repentance without regret.

Now repentance simply means turning around and going the other way.

And this is what so often we’re called to do by God in our lives. We find that our inner lives are a mess, that we can’t make life work the way it needs to work. We can’t find any solution, no matter what we do. Things keep getting worse, and we know that there’s a big problem in our relationship with God, that we’re living in a way that is not pleasing to Him. It’s offensive to Him.

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And we need God in our lives.

It’s a fact. Every one of us needs God in our lives. You are body, soul, and spirit. Your body needs food in order to be healthy.

Your soul is the emotional part of you, the shape of your personality, and when your soul is damaged, you know you need relationships and healthy relationships in your life to bring healing and wholeness to you.

But your spirit, that’s the part of you that is connected to God. God designed us this way so that life would only work properly when when our relationship with Him is healthy, and when it’s not healthy, then our whole life is out of whack. Maybe you’re there right now in your life, and you’d say my inner life is a mess, and I know I need God’s help. Well, the way to that is repentance.

And being confronted with things in your life that need to change between you and God is not pleasant, is it? It doesn’t make you happy to recognize those things. It’s a bit unpleasant, but it’s a necessary part of life to face that and to make things right between you and God. It brings you to a repentance without regret.

Sometimes you think, but I like my life the way it is. I like living this way, even though I know it’s not pleasing to God. But in reality you can see that it’s destructive to your inner life, so you need to face that, and it’s hard to make those choices to choose for God instead of the things that you’ve been moving towards and looking to try and fill the void in your life. They never will, only God will.

And you need to let them go, make things right with God, and move on, you will never regret repentance.

I’m John North.

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